Keywords

Visualization; Skeletonization; Virtual Flythrough; Camera direction.

Abstract

Skeleton is useful shape interpretation for 3D object,
which has been found in many applications in medical
visualization such as virtual bronchoscopes and virtual
colonoscopies. In this study, an efficient system for virtual
fly-through of 3D volumetric medical images is presented,
which consists of two phases, namely, path-planning and
virtual camera view direction calculation. The path
planning phase employs a skeletonization method based
on voxel coding [1][2]. The outcome of first phase is a
connected and one-voxel-thin centreline of 3D object,
which provides the location of virtual camera for fly
through. In second phase, an innovative scheme is
introduced which calculates the smoothed and stable view
direction of the virtual camera. It is based on updating the
view direction of the previous site by adding a deviation
vector that is determined by weighted average of
deviation vector of next n voxels with respect to current
location. The system is applied on a range of 3D CT
scanned medical data sets and the experimental results
demonstrate the efficiency of proposed algorithms.